Alignment-Based Prediction of Sites of Metabolism

Prediction of metabolically labile atom positions in a molecule (sites of metabolism) is a key component of the simulation of xenobiotic metabolism as a whole, providing crucial information for the development of safe and effective drugs. In 2008, an exploratory study was published in which sites of metabolism were derived based on molecular shape- and chemical feature-based alignment to a molecule whose site of metabolism (SoM) had been determined by experiments. We present a detailed analysis of the breadth of applicability of alignment-based SoM prediction, including transfer of the approach from a structure- to ligand-based method and extension of the applicability of the models from cytochrome P450 2C9 to all cytochrome P450 isozymes involved in drug metabolism. We evaluate the effect of molecular similarity of the query and reference molecules on the ability of this approach to accurately predict SoMs. In addition, we combine the alignment-based method with a leading chemical reactivity model to take reactivity into account. The combined model yielded superior performance in comparison to the alignment-based approach and the reactivity models with an average area under the receiver operating characteristic curve of 0.85 in cross-validation experiments. In particular, early enrichment was improved, as evidenced by higher BEDROC scores (mean BEDROC = 0.59 for α = 20.0, mean BEDROC = 0.73 for α = 80.5).